Tag Archives: women’s suffrage

Cameron’s Corner

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Cameron Smith is a rising high school senior. I’ve not met him, but over the past couple of years I’ve heard a good deal about him. He’s a debater, and a good one. This summer he’s going to debate camp at Southwest Missouri State. He’s an honor student, and this summer he is also an intern with the Saint Louis League of Women Voters

While he works in the League office I will doubtless meet him, since I hang out there occasionally to watch my beloved work on the Voters’ Guide and other worthy projects. I’m a member of the League, a proud member you might say, and I have a big button to wear that reads: “LWV—Not for Women Only.” Maybe I’ll give Cameron my button when I meet him, unless he already has one. I don’t really need it any more since I am generally recognized as one of the League’s resident old farts.

I wrote about the League here in 2008; and I’m surprised to find that I haven’t written anything since. The Saint Louis League is becoming a model for other Leagues nationally. A couple of years ago my beloved and her now Co-President, Linda McDaniel, negotiated a deal with the St. Louis Post Dispatch to produce the St. Louis Voter’s Guide jointly. Since then our local League’s growth has accelerated. Always a force in the community, our St. Louis League is a primary venue for civic engagement here. As an index of that we will have run fifty plus candidate forums before the current election cycle is over.

Cameron Smith is writing a blog about his adventures working for the League this summer. You can find it here.

yellow umbrellas

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On Saturday I participated in a commemoration of the Walkless Talkless Parade in support of women’s suffrage at the 1916 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis. About 100 members of the League of Women Voters of St. Louis gathered at Boileau Hall at St. Louis University and walked for a mile or so carrying yellow umbrellas. All the walkers were female, but some of us male members of the league helped in other ways. I directed traffic at one of the parking entrances and attended the speech making, which was good fun. Here’s a photo of the march as it began on Vendeventer Avenue.

The original Walkless Talkless Parade was the brainchild of Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a St. Louis Civic leader and one of the founding members of the League. 7000 women lined both sides of Locust Street downtown so that the DNC delegates had to pass them on their way from their hotel to the convention hall. Gellhorn described it as follows in a 1964 interview:

We decided we didn’t want to have a parade but we did want to be noticed …so thousands of us, in yellow sashes, carrying yellow parasols, lined both sides of Locust Street. . . . In front of the old Art Museum we had a tableau. The tableau was a memorable event. The women representing states that had women’s suffrage were draped in white. Those from states with partial suffrage . . . were draped in gray. Those from states with no votes for women, including Missouri, were draped in black . . . [T]wo little girls . . . represented future voters.

According to a recent biography, one of those girls was Martha Gellhorn, Edna’s daughter who would become the first female war correspondent. Edna Gellhorn was a graduate of Bryn Mawr. My source for the quotation is a page at the Bryn Mawr website where you can see a youthful photograph of Gellhorn and several photos of the original “Golden Lane.” The league also has a page about Gellhorn, where you can see a copy of her portrait and listen to a recorded speech and part of a 1969 television interview.